Virgin showcases SpaceShipTwo model

NEW YORK: U.K.-based Virgin Group's head Richard Branson unveiled a mock-up version of the suborbital spaceship his company, Virgin Galactic, will use to take passengers into space. A full-size model of SpaceShipTwo was displayed at the Javits exhibition centre in New York Thursday. The spaceship is expected to carry six passengers and two pilots. The model on show had a large cabin with reclining seats for the passengers and large portholes. The interior is developed with features that will allow the passengers to float around. The model showed a white interior with scooped-up seats. According Virgin Group, the price a passenger will have to pay for the odyssey, which includes several minutes of experiencing weightlessness, will be $200,000.The rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo is being built in private by aviation designer Burt Rutan in California's Mojave Desert. Its design is based on SpaceShipOne, also designed by Rutan, and which became the first privately built vehicle to reach space in 2004.Virgin Group has assigned to Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, the task of designing and building the passenger spaceship and its mothership. Virgin Galactic will own and operate at least five spaceships and two motherships.Test flights are expected sometime next year, and the first flight in 2008. While initial flights will originate from California, a facility will be built in New Mexico called Spaceport America, at a cost of $225 million. Virgin Galactic plans to carry 500 people in its space flights in the first year. The company's president Will Whitehorn said his company intends to hold a reality TV show where contestants will be able to compete to win a place on a space flight. Among the first space passengers will be a London businessman, Alan Watts, who has traded airmiles for his ticket. He will undergo three days of training before the two-and-a-half-hour journey, reaching speeds of up to 3,000 mph.The space passengers will not get any in-flight meals and "a number of products" will be available to settle the stomach and bowels so that the passengers can experience the G-forces. The sub-orbital space flight will give a clear view of the curvature of the earth and the thinness of the atmosphere.